HELL

[KUSA]

if Christianity is true, then why not believe in it?

If it were true I would believe in it. However, it is so far fetched, preposterous, and unsupported that only a person lacking judgment and sense would believe in it. I find it easier to believe in the tooth fairy.

[KevinM1]

What's the point of religion, if we get to meet god when we die, and decide if we want to be with him or not?

What's the purpose of wasting so much time praying and doing things for a being that is most likely not there, and if he ends up being there, you get to choose to go to heaven?

Why believe in all of the made-up stories that are almost certainly false, when you don't have to?

A couple things. First, if Christianity is true, then why not believe in it? Also, I don't necessarily think it's as simple as just "deciding." I mean, yes, it is a choice we make, but the type of person we become in this life will be the person who makes that choice in the afterlife. And it's not just like "oh hey God, I choose Heaven." Remember, it is a state of being. So if we're not good people with good hearts, it's less likely that we will humble ourselves completely before God and be repentant of times we acted wrongly. It is less likely that we will be able to be in that state if we were bad, cold hearted people our whole lives. I believe that being a follower of Christ can help prepare us for that. Not that all Christians are good people, and not that non Christians aren't, but I believe being a true follower of Christ and His teachings may help set someone up for success.

This seems like a sibling to the commonly held assumption by theists that if god was proven to exist, atheists would then worship it.  Which is far from the truth, for many reasons.

[robvalue]

Right. I don't agree that "humbling" as it is usually referred to, is a good thing. I think it is demeaning yourself. It amounts to just begging someone who is powerful not to crush you and speaks of fear. Of course, if someone points a gun at me, I would pretend to "humble" myself, because I may find a way to escape. But we're talking about a god. I'm not going to be able to give him the slip am I? And there is no gun; only an imaginary one.

Of course god, if it exists, is more powerful than us. We know it, he knows it. Why would he require we acknowledge it in such an explicit way and continually tell him it?

Being humble as in recognizing your limitations, your ability to be wrong and not to place yourself above others is a good quality. That is not the same as prostrating yourself and placing yourself below another being. That is not a necessary way to give thanks, and it wouldn't be required by anyone other than an egotistical dictator. I don't in any way equate it with "good".

[Neo-Scholastic]

Typical mistake, the commandments are not cumulative. Just because God commanded Noah to build an ark doesn't mean all believers must become sailors. The antediluvians had one command: be fruitful and multiply. The lack of explicit laws during the preflood period did not absolve people from justice. Following the flood the Noahide rules govern. The Abrahamic period was an age of conscience. Then came the ancient Israelite theocracy that required its own form of governance. When the temple was destroyed so also was temple worship. Christ raised a new temple in the heart of each man and woman and along with it a deeper understanding of the principles of justice and mercy behind the laws of each dispensation.

[Whateverist]

 This is why the Bible is the authority and not man made doctrine, belief in the scriptures as truth from the first word to the last is the only way to understand and make sense of God's plan.

GC

Every bible I've ever seen looks to have been printed here on earth in a conventional manner. The language is English (in the ones I've seen), a language spoken here on earth. By all accounts the authors were all men.

So make the bible your authority if you will but what you're holding onto there is entirely manmade. When what you believe in is supernatural and yet all any of you can point to are natural things, there is no virtuous point of view to claim. [As opposed to the part of your statement which I bolded.]

[Thumpalumpacus]

I should think that with your head you're better off deciding for yourself things like right and wrong. The Church has screwed up enough that they don't deserve your trust. /.02

You won't convey that to any believer - and I don't mean that to be disrespectful to CL. It's on the same lines as kicking the habit with any kind of drug. You have to want it. You have to have your own doubts before you even start listening to anybody else.

Oh, I know. But it still had to be said.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Judging from some of the questions/comments, I can see that some of you simply did not understand the original post lol. I'm sorry, but I just don't know how to make it any more clear. I thought the article explained the concept pretty well. Some of you are still acting as though it's a "punishment" cast by God, that no one deserves. It's not. It's a state of being that a person puts themselves in, and in doing so, they make themselves pretty miserable.

That's your definition of it, which is no more informed than anyone else's here.

[abaris]

Some of you are still acting as though it's a "punishment" cast by God, that no one deserves. It's not. It's a state of being that a person puts themselves in, and in doing so, they make themselves pretty miserable.

That's why I called it mental acrobatics. Theists do that in various shapes or form when it comes to the topic of hell. As I said, the Catholic stance is only the nicer version of the Evangelical position. But both have in common that they shift responsibilities in order to keep god free from any blame. It's the individual condemning themselves.

What it reminds me of is Franz Kafka's "the Trial", which more or less makes the same point. And there's a reason why Kafkaesk has become the word for surreal distortion.

[Crossless2.0]

I always thought hell was other people.  Don't tell me I'm wrong.

You're not. You're just missing the other piece: that hell is actually an eternal weekend in Branson, MO. Now think of who those other people will be, Jean-Paul!

Yee-haw!

[Catholic_Lady]

And Boru, you hit the nail on the head. It is not meant to be about reward and punishment. That's why I always say that those Christians who act a certain way simply in order to be rewarded in Heaven, or in order to avoid Hell, are missing the whole point. God loves us and He wants us to be with Him because He loves us, not simply for "rewarding" purposes. We "go to" Hell not as a punishment from God, as the article says, but because we chose to be away from Him.

Very well.  If Heaven and Hell are not meant as reward and punishment respectively, then one may as well be good and loving for its own sake.  Atheists (by and large) already do just that, so it isn't so much a question of rejecting God as it is one of not needing God in the first place.

But I think that rejecting the idea of Hell as a punishment is pretty hard to sustain.  Not only Biblically, but the notion of punishing sinners is found throughout Catholic dogma.

If God truly loves us, then it isn't easy to explain why sin (in the sense of the rejection of God) exists at all.  This isn't even a question of free will:  God could simply not allow the births of people who would reject him.  Since there are people who reject not only the person of God but the whole notion of God in toto (Your Humble Narrator, for instance), a fair conclusion is that God either doesn't exist, or that he doesn't love us all that much, or that his desire for us to be with him isn't all that strong.  Sort of a disinterested God, wouldn't you say?

Boru

There's nothing in Catholic doctrine that says Hell is a "punishment" God casts on us. That's exactly what the article I posted was about... it was about Catholic theologians explicitly saying that it isn't that lol. Sure, it has been described as punishment, and it has also been described as a state of being as seen on the OP. But since we can't claim to know for sure, neither description is official Church doctrine. It's all speculation and theories.  

To answer your question, I don't really think it's that simple. Of course it's impossible to give a 100% for sure answer to these difficult questions, but I think God just let's nature take its coarse and isn't a micro manager who "stops" certain people from being born because He knows they'll be bad people. Furthermore, you never know how a bad person might bring about some positive to someone else. They may have children who end up being very good people, or they might be a life lesson to someone else, etc. But yes, the question of why God allows certain things to happen (in this case, letting certain people exist) has been asked many times and is a very good question. Difficult to know and difficult to answer.